Louise Shelley

On her book Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective

Editor’s note

Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline

“Human trafficking will remain a defining problem of the 21st century.”

We highlighted two quotes.

On the first page:

“Human smuggling and trafficking have been among the fastest growing forms of transnational crime—because current world conditions have created increased imbalances of demand and supply. Imbalances of supply and demand have created a flourishing business for traffickers.”

On the second:

“There was no single model of slavery. Slavery was different in the American colonies, Brazil, and the Horn of Africa. Just as the trade in humans was shaped in the past by cultural, geographic, and economic forces, today’s human trafficking is also shaped by these forces as well as historical traditions.”

[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?Iftikhar Dadi, Interview of March 26, 2012

The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.Richard Ned Lebow, Interview of October 4, 2010